Judgment In Stairway To Heaven

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Stairway to Heaven, originally titled A Matter of Life and Death, captures a distant interpretation of traditional views of Heaven, Hell, and Judgment. The directors do this by reshaping standard images of Heaven, eliminating Hell and restructuring Judgment. All together this created a vastly different afterlife than was constructed by classic artists such as Dante, and Michelangelo.
Death is uniquely contradictory in Stairway to Heaven. Death seems to be both predetermined and structured but also negotiable. Conductor 71 alludes that he knows June will live a long life, and seems to know the exact day and time to expect June to die. Additionally, the Conductor had to expect Peters death in order
A soul would be compared to Maat and that judgement would determine their afterlife. The weighing of souls against Maat gave an early understanding of standards one should live up to in order to secure a favorable judgement in the afterlife. Similarly, In Dante’s Inferno Minos hears each soul confess their sins and then determines what circle of hell the sinners go to. Each circle of Hell correlates to a different sect of sins. Followers of this belief have directions laid out very clearly of how to live their lives in order to assure a good final judgment. Every character in Stairway to Heaven that goes to heaven, goes straight to heaven. It seems as though their judgement was predetermined and is then skipped over and they are automatically placed in either Heaven or Hell.
In this film judgement is shown when the main character is appealing for more time in life. This is a judgement we have not yet seen in the class, Judgment typically referred to one’s placement in heaven or hell, not one’s placement in life or death. This notion of judgment before death in the form of an appeal suggests that death is